Okay, I've finished the main story now. Post-game includes one dungeon and you just being a farmer like usual, but I'm pretty sure the usual stuff are just that, so I don't think I really need to do that to write my thoughts on the game.
Okay, let me just be blunt.
It is not a well-made game. There are many problems with it, from glitches to just poor game design. However, if you are a fan of Rune Factory, this does have the minimum that makes it Rune Factory, with all new waifus. But yeah, if you are not a fan of this game and or not sure if you should get it, I honestly cannot suggest this game.
So... let's get down to the problems.
Bugs/Glitches
They are everywhere. I will list some below, some that I have encountered myself and others I heard/saw from others.
- The characters will speak special one-time lines depending on your story progress. Except there are times they will say it, then the next day, they will still say it. Yeah, imagine a character saying a line about meeting someone the first time multiple times.
- When you bring a character along with you, their map icon actually appears elsewhere sometimes
- You are moving among your crops, bringing monsters with you... and then the monster steps on your tree and the tree disappears (and you know how long it takes to grow a tree)
- Getting stuck on the loading screen
- Priscilla's graphics gets messed up, and she gets stuck holding her baby. Even if the baby has grown up. So when she attacks, she attacks holding the baby. And that weird stuff.
- When you plow certain items to heal your farm, despite plowing 9 at a time, it only heals for 1 time
- Lucy disappears
- Your shipping box can overflow, meaning if you have too much value in it, you start losing instead of gaining stuff
- You shipped high-level crop, but the store's seeds/products aren't updated to that level
- You knock an enemy into the wall, and they fall off the face of the Earth. Except since you didn't kill it and can no longer kill it, you are stuck because the room doesn't let you out until you have killed all enemies.
And so on.
The game has also crashed twice, but Monster Hunter Rise crashed twice and while it has not happened to me, I have seen Xenoblade 2 crash as well, so I won't hold the crashing against this game specifically. But yes, this game has crashed a couple of times.
Bad Game Design
- Stuttering... or FPS drop, whatever. I'm just going with stuttering for now. So yeah, lots and lots of this. The game will stutter for a few seconds when you load the game. It will also stutter for like half-a-second when you enter and exit houses. And oh bow, festivals. Graffiti flies in the air during festival days. So you betcha. Even more stuttering than usual on those days.
- It's not even like the graphics are good, so very poor optimization.
- Loading... The game loads every time you enter and exit houses. Although the load itself is quite short, a second, perhaps. But you do realize that you enter and exit houses a LOT of times, CONSTANTLY. So it isn't ignorable.
- If a shop employee goes out for a walk, there is no way to buy stuff from them. Even if you bring them back with you. This is especially problematic for stuff like buying fish or flowers where only one character sells them. Oh yeah, there is also only one inns-keeper. And yes, what this means is that on festival days, you just flat out can't do anything in the town, since everyone goes to the festival. These days of celebration are so inconvenient for the player.
- There are character events for both the waifus and the guys, but you can't really avoid them. Even if you would want to only see the waifus' events, you can't. These events occur when you go to a certain location, but some occur in places like your room making them absolutely unavoidable. And if two events occur in the same place, you can't choose. You have to finish the events in the order they appear. Also if you are in the middle of a character's event, you can't even confess your love successfully.
- Other than your main farm beside your house, you get a farm onto of several dragons. Now, you would think that there would be some kind of advantage of each dragon, right? Like one dragon would be always summer and one would be always Winter? No. There is no difference at all. They are just additional land.
- There seems to be a lot of text copied from previous games, but despite all the copying, some information about stuff like seeds and how long they take are no longer in the description.
- Characters don't even move their mouths when they speak in cut-scenes. Yeah.
- There is absolutely no pattern in which lines are voiced and which are not. Sometimes a line will be fully voiced, sometimes partly voiced, and sometimes just not voiced. A conversation might have some lines voiced, and some lines not voiced, and this is not necessarily the beginning is voiced or something like that. Sometimes just a line in the middle of a conversation gets voiced. I don't know which lines I should wait for the voice to finish because of this.
Story
It just isn't good. Not enough development for the villain side. Poor presentation in general.
I mean, if you are gonna show a dramatic scene where we learn why the protagonist lost his memory or the true villain, it'd be nice if you changed the BGM? You know, instead of continuing with the very peaceful town BGM?
Characters
- Priscilla - The normal, main heroine girl
- Scarlett - The overly-serious girl
- Lucy - Tom-boy?
- Fuka - Dark-skinned, animal girl
- Beatrice - Ojou-sama who doesn't know much about the normal world
- Ludmila - Masochistic succubus
...Guess who are popular?
Yup. Ludmila. 2nd place is Beatrice. Then Lucy and Priscilla. And last are Scalett and Fuka.
Why is Fuka so unpopular? Because she doesn't talk in the human language. The characters understand her because they can if they listen to the heart of the cards, but she just goes "Bark bark" or whatever sound you want to translate it to. On top of that, her lines go "Bark bark (How are you doing)" where the bark and the actual meaning are both in her lines. And when her line is voiced, both parts are voiced, which is pretty icky on the tempo.
And that's a shame. Dark-skin, loli, animal girl. She's perfect! ...On the outside.
Scalett, the overly-serious girl is just not a popular archetype.
Lucy and Priscilla are normal.
I don't really know why Beatrice is popular, maybe just because all of the other girls are too boring outside Ludmila.
So yeah, pretty much only Ludmila has an interesting, weird personality that you would want to learn more about. So naturally she is the most popular. I was aiming for her even before the game came out, BTW.
Also, she only appears starting mid-game, so yeah... And oh, she's the only person that runs the flower shop, so you can't buy fertilizer or that sort until you reach that part of the game.
I don't care about the guys, so I'm not going to say anything about them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are many problems with the game. I was really looking forward to the game, so I am disappointed that it was so poorly made. However, if you are a Rune Factory fan itching for new waifu, it does qualify as a Rune Factory game, and you can probably still enjoy it.
hey seem to be trying to release weekly updates that fix some problems in the game, or make changes that increase the performance of the game, or fix some game design problems. For instance, Murakumo spends more time in his job location, so you can actually use the inn when the inn is supposed to be open. They also kinda improved the performance of the game by hiding certain objects when not needed.
So a big question is what version of the game will be released when the localized version comes out.
Also, while it is a good thing they are releasing patches of the game instead of just running away (which would probably signal the doom of the series itself), it doesn't change the fact they did release the game full of glitches and just overall a bad state, and that is quite a disappointment.
BTW, I do think that having unique 3D graphics for all of the food and weapons and stuff is pretty cool though, so good job on that.
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